After Lake County’s most expensive write-in campaign, Carey Baker still lost 3-to-1 to Mark Jordan

Lake County property Carey Baker took a step in 2020 that seemed cheap, smart and successful. He secured re-election for a four-year term without paying a cent.

But this year the same trick cost him his job.

Baker qualified as a write-in candidate for the second consecutive cycle to avoid paying a qualifying fee, believing he would face no opposition. But just after Baker left the building, and minutes before the qualifying period ended, Mark Jordan also filed and paid the fee of $10,685 to qualify as the Republican candidate for the ballot.

Despite Baker running the most expensive campaign for a write-in candidate in Lake County history, Jordan just won office by more than a margin. Margin of 51 percentage points.

Nearly 44,000 Lake County residents voted for a write-in candidate for Property Appraiser in the general election, and presumably nearly all of them will ultimately count for Baker once officials verify that voters scribbled his name on a special line. But nearly 141,000 voted for Jordan, who enjoyed the almost immeasurable advantage of having his name literally appear in a blank spot on the ballot.

Now Jordan is preparing to take office after spending more time in court defending against lawsuits filed by Baker and allies. Baker, a former state representative and senator, is now looking at his first days of 21st century in which the Republican does not hold public office. But that may not last forever.

“My political future looks bright,” Baker said. “Most people realized what this would be like. My support is still strong and I have many choices. The easiest thing is to just serve four years and run for office again, and as long as my name is on the ballot, I can easily win.

Of course, anyone reading the election results would see that Jordan just dethroned a sitting president in a landslide. And he did it with minimal costs. Financial reports through Oct. 31 show Jordan raised just over $25,000 over the course of the campaign, while Baker raised nearly $233,000.

“I had a political advantage,” Jordan said. “Why shout and scream?”

Jordan kept his head down for the most part during the race. He also spent thousands on it SimWinsa Tampa-based political consulting firm. But records show his biggest campaign expense was the qualifying fee that set off the whole bitter fight.

To this day, Jordan maintains that he was not certain Baker would choose to be considered as a write-in candidate, but acknowledges that he did know Baker had done so earlier in 2020. qualifying at the same time as Baker. Both men had filled out paperwork in advance and signed up before the afternoon deadline, and Jordan said he had no way of knowing what paperwork Baker would turn in, nor could he change his political strategy after the deadline.

“He (Baker) had the documents in his hand and had a check attached to the top,” Jordan said. Jordan noticed his tax collector brother David Jordaneven asked if Baker would pay the fee this time. “My brother said to him, ‘Are you going to do that switcheroo thing?’ And my brother even said, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

David Jordan told a similar story in Julyshortly after the qualification date. Baker said both men are not telling the truth about their interactions in the office.

Afterwards, Baker sued the Supervisor of Elections and Mark Jordan, but the courts said they did nothing against the law. The Lake County Republican Executive Committee condemned David Jordan and called on Mark Jordan to resign as candidate.

The irony, Mark Jordan notes, is that part of his compensation as a partisan candidate went to the local party. Because Baker did not pay a fee to qualify as a write-in candidate this year or four years ago, the party received no such windfall from him. But the party used resources partially financed from Jordan’s own pocket so that the party could attack him and his brother, who also paid a fee and won office unopposed.

“What would they have done if a Democrat had done this?” he said.

Mark Jordan said defending his actions in court ultimately cost him tens of thousands of dollars. But he said he always had the same right to run for office as any other citizen. Other elements played a role in his decision to run for Property Valuer, he said, and his decision to keep quiet about it until the final day of qualifying.

“When I looked at that office, I thought it could definitely be better,” he said. “Looking at it, I would definitely run as a Republican.”

But Jordan believed that if he was going to challenge an incumbent president, he wanted an open primary where Democrats and voters without party affiliation could also have a vote. Had he announced this earlier this week, he assumed Baker’s allies would, ironically, field a write-in candidate to close the primary to Republican voters. The registration hole has been exploited for decades by candidates of both parties in the state, often by incumbents who only want party stalwarts to vote.

Jordan also wanted to run a short campaign with Baker not having time to amass a fortune before the August 20 vote.

Ironically, Baker became the write-in candidate, but that gave him until the Nov. 5 election to raise money and aggressively campaign for the seat. Newly printed signs encouraging voters to “Write In Carey Baker” have appeared across the county in recent months, especially leading up to Election Day. Before the end of October, he spent more than $151,000 on the race.

But Baker acknowledges he always knew the race would be a gamble. That was especially evident on election day, when he campaigned outside constituencies and found little interest in a race that was so far down the ballot.

“What caused our record turnout was the top of the ticket, the presidential race,” he said. “I talked to people, but they were there to support their favorite presidential candidate. Everything else was incidental.”

More than 227,000 votes were cast for president in Lake County, including 140,393 for Donald Trump only. Jordan, who appeared on the ballot with his party designation, received 140,828 votes, and fewer than 185,000 voted for Property Appraiser at all.

As Baker filled out his own ballot, he also realized for the first time how much he was asking voters to break with common practice. He had never voted for a write-in candidate in his life by filling in a bubble and writing the ten letters of his own name on a line. “It was just different,” he said.

But Baker still felt empowered by the fact that his campaign reached so many people.

“More than 43,000 people in Lake County wrote my name,” he said. “It honestly warms my heart.

He still feels drawn to run and is inclined to apply to become a real estate appraiser in 2028.

“People won’t forget what happened,” he said. “It touched them in a personal way. I think this will unfortunately remain fresh in the minds of many people.”

Jordan knows he’ll have to deal with that when he takes over as real estate appraiser in a few weeks. He wants Baker’s employees to know he has no intention of taking away anyone’s job.

“This job is really ministerial,” he said. “My background is in emergency services and I have served in a variety of capacities. But it is mainly about team building and working together within certain frameworks. How the office is going to function and how we are going to produce a good product for the taxpayer, we have people who understand it. I hope they appreciate having a fresh breath of new leadership.”

He will look for ways to improve customer service for Lake County residents, and that will involve assessing the entire business operations.

Notably, some of the few contributions Jordan raised came from companies tied to the developer and former U.S. Senate candidate Carlos Beruffwhich has pending legal action against Baker’s Office over appraisals of local properties.

“You inherit what’s left of your predecessor,” Jordan said. “I will discuss it with a legal advisor and look for a way to find a solution. That’s the goal. But I am not making any assumptions in this matter.”

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